Before I became a graphic designer, I was a fine artist. I made gigantic collages out of stacks and stacks of the same magazine (all Time, or all fashion magazines, etc) plus these weird contour drawings I painted over with gesso and then re-drew and repainted. I still have them somewhere.

In school, I was both enthralled and disgusted by the art world and its empty sort of discourse. We talked about things without saying anything. I like to joke that the one useful skill I picked up from school was the ability to BS and make it sound believable, at least about art. My talent at post-rationalization is truly astounding, honed by long debates over whether or not a bag of MSG is really an installation piece or what a piece of string nailed to the wall says about the human condition. I’ve gotten to the point where I would really rather not ever have my art displayed publicly (that’s a lie – I’d jump at the chance, if given one) and I don’t read the little descriptions next to art in galleries other than to see what medium the piece was created in (truth – I hate those descriptions).

So when I saw this preview, I was delighted and repulsed all at once. I find this to be so true in such wonderful and awful ways. While it’s poking fun at the art world, the experiences it appears to be mimicking are really on the dot:

(untitled)